


Of Phone Calls and Comfortable Chairs

by ThaliaClio



Series: Demons and Playmates [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Psych, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Fury is a Bond villain, And Tony has comfortable chairs, Fury is secretly a softy, Fury is too, SHIELD does not know all, Shawn is a hairdresser, Shawn is confusing, Shawn knows everyone, Steve is Confused, That thing in England
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:09:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knows what shwarma is. Tony makes a phone call after Loki. Fury makes a phone call, too. Steve meets a hair stylist and adult film star. Alternatively titled “Tony is a Tango Dancer”.</p><p>We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours. -Unknown</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

The Avengers save the world. The Hulk saves Iron Man.

Steve is so damn relieved he can’t even breathe. It’s over. One more war won. _(This isn't the end.)_

“So… shwarma?” He asks in the silence of a ruined street.

Loki is being held on the Helicarrier – hopefully more effectively this time – and his team is just standing in the middle of New York with blood on their faces and dust on their clothes. Where Bruce managed to salvage a pair of pants and a shirt is a mystery to Steve.

“Yeah,” Stark breathes out, maybe a little labored. “It’s this way. C’mon.”

They all fall in line behind the dented metal suit. Stark’s helmet is clutched in his hand. It feels odd to follow and not lead.

“What is this 'shwarma' of which you speak?” Thor suddenly asks from the back.

_

Shwarma, as it turns out, is delicious. Even if Steve still doesn’t know what it is. For a good ten minutes there’s no sound aside from the chewing.

Then –

“Does anybody have a working phone?” Stark’s voice is odd. Worried? Guilty? Somehow those emotions don’t mesh with his view of the genius-billionaire-philanthropist. Then Steve realizes he really needs to rethink his view. _(That's a one way trip.)_ “I need – I – there’s a call I have to make.”

Hearing Stark stutter is even odder to Steve. A glance around the table shows similar disbelief on his teammates’ faces.

“The communicator in my suit is broken,” Stark gestures at his dented, scratched helmet when nobody answers, maybe a little defensive.

“I have phone,” six heads whip around when the voice of the Middle Eastern restaurant owner is heard from the back. The small man gestures at the wall where a corded phone hangs, smiling uncertainly as he clutches his broom.

“Thanks,” Stark responds, voice heavy with relief as he heaves himself upright with a visible effort.

Steve winces for him when he hears the metal groan and creak. If the suit’s so damaged, he doesn’t want to think about how bruised Stark is. A flash of guilt. He should’ve made everybody get medical attention before shwarma. He’s team leader. Their safety is his responsibility. He clings to the belief that they would tell him if something were seriously wrong. _(Bucky never did.)_

The team tries not to stare as Stark leans against the wall and dials, but everyone sneaks glances. At one point Steve meets Natasha’s eyes, one perfect red eyebrow ticking upwards as she jerks her head at Stark. Steve shrugs. Isn’t she supposed to be the one who can read people like a book?

“Hi. It’s, uh, me.” Stark looks distinctly uncomfortable, and Natasha’s eyes narrow ever the slightest as she tilts her head towards the conversation.

Steve furrows his brow at her, but she’s looking at Barton, having a silent conversation consisting entirely of facial twitches. Banner is staring intently at his food, but clearly listening. Steve has given up all pretense of not staring.

_“You fucking asshole. I thought you were dead. You can’t that to me. That’s like, like, like saying pineapples are going extinct or Tom Cruise never made it to the Danger Zone o-or, or – fuck.”_

Super-soldier hearing or not, Steve thinks he could have heard the man shouting from the table. Natasha and Barton and Banner clearly did. Natasha's eyebrows - both of them - shoot straight up. Steve is startled by the blatant surprise on her face, and, just as clearly, is Barton. They both blink at her questioningly, but she twitches up a finger, signalling for silence.

“But I’m not!” Stark’s tone is forced-light. His eyes are closed, his posture sagging as he leans his head on the phone. “I’m not.”

_“I’m coming to New York.”_

“The flights are all grounded.” Stark doesn’t sound convincing, more disappointed.

_“I’m already driving.”_

“That’s two days’ worth of driving.”

 _What is going on,_ he mouths at Natasha _._ She waves a hand at him, scrunching her brow.

_“I was at Niagara Falls.”_

Stark smiles a little bit, relieved. “You want me to send Pep to come get you?”

 _"Tell Molly I’m at the Canadian border.”_ A pause. _“Just… Don’t die, okay?”_ Another pause. _“Gi melin.”_

Stark scrubs at his hair, and his laugh is a little watery to Steve. “Five lives left.” A pause. “Gi melin.” Click.

There is no sound other than the mechanical grinding of Stark’s armor as he lumbers back to the table. Nobody says anything as he picks up his shwarma and keeps eating until –

“Jonothan Winchester?” Natasha sounds a little rueful.

Stark smiles a little bit as he sets down his food again. “ _Supernatural_ marathon.”

A glance around the table shows that nobody but Natasha and Stark know what’s going on right now. And Natasha still seems a little confused.

Steve opens his mouth, intending to demand an explanation, but all that comes out is a very confused, “What?”

Stark turns to him, and if his eyes are little bit wet and wide, well, nobody’s saying anything. “I had to call back a friend. Let him know I was not, in fact, stuck in interstellar space, despite having told him I was going to be not half an hour ago.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Who's Jonothan Winchester?” Banner speaks for the first time.

“ 's name is Shawn, really,” Stark answers as he turns back to his food, apparently done with this conversation.

“And he’s coming to New York?” Steve asks, finding his words again.

Five pairs of eyes turn towards him. Apparently you did need super-soldier hearing for that one.

"From 'Niagara Falls', aye?" Or god-like hearing.

Stark narrows his eyes. “Your point?” That easy relief is gone from his tone, replaced with creeping defensiveness and belligerence.

Steve feels admonishment crawling up his throat, but he forces it back down, and holds up a hand in surrender. “No point. Curious.”

Stark relaxes almost imperceptibly, the lines around his eyes loosening just a little bit. “So what next, Captain, my Captain?”

Steve blinks.

_

What ends up being next is Thor taking Loki home. Steve stayed at SHIELD with Natasha and Barton and Thor while Stark and Banner do something to the Tesseract to make it teleportation-ready.

Seeing two gods teleport isn’t as weird as it should have been.

Steve shakes Tony’s hand, and then they all leave.

He doesn’t see any of them for two weeks.

_

He’s just gotten back from Vancouver when he gets the call. By now he’s learned Fury’s anger is directly proportional to his cursing. There’s quite a few expletives. Apparently Stark has been ducking his debriefing for the past two weeks, and Fury needs to know if Stark has spoken to him. Steve says no, but he’s in town, and why doesn’t he go check on Stark?

The cursing drops by about fifty percent, and Steve wonders if the phone wasn’t just a blatant manipulation on Fury’s part, too impatient to deal with a snarky, disrespectful genius.

_

When Steve stands at the foot of what was once Stark Tower, he suddenly feels intimidated. Not just because of the size or sheer _modernity_ of the Tower, but because it’s now the _Avengers_ Tower. Steve swallows hard, and then walks in.

The lobby is… average. Modern, yes, but not exponentially more so than the dozens of other skyscrapers around New York. That’s almost more disorienting than if it had been futuristic.

The receptionist is young, pretty. Her brown curls remind him of Peggy, and his heart seizes briefly in his chest before he can ask what floor Mr. Stark is on. She looks at him oddly, but dials a number, telling whoever’s on the other line that _Captain Steve Rogers is here for Mr. Stark_. Try as he might, he can’t hear the response. Maybe Stark did something to his phones.

The receptionist tells him to wait, and so he goes and sits in a square black leather chair that turns out to be far more comfortable than it looks.

Twenty minutes later and Steve understands why the chairs are so comfortable – if they weren’t, he might actually be inclined to get up and wring Stark’s neck. Finally the elevators ding, and Steve heaves himself upright, annoyance rising as the comfort of the chair fades. When the man finally steps out of the doors – it’s not Stark. Steve frowns and begins to sit, automatically dismissing the stranger even as he catalogues him.

_5’10, 5’11. Mid-twenties. In shape, but not bulky. Sandy brown hair. Stubble. Green T-shirt with a logo he doesn’t recognize. Baggy jeans. Clearly a civilian._

“Hey there, Man With a Plan.”

Steve suppresses a groan. Having people appreciate you was one thing, but he was beginning to feel like a circus monkey again. Forcing his USO smile on his face, Steve stopped his motion, rising again and extending a hand to the stranger.

The man quirks an eyebrow, and looks at him with an expression that just screams _I know something you don’t_. “Calm down, Tom Cruise. I am not you’re adoring public.”

Steve frowns again and lowers his hand slowly. “I was looking for Mr. Stark.”

The corner of one lip quirks up. “Willie’s dead and gone, buddy.”Steve looks blankly at him. He sighs. “Nobody reads the classics anymore.”

“I was frozen for 70 years.”

“Excuses, excuses,” a hand waves him off.

Steve blinks. “I’m sorry, sir, but I was waiting for somebody,” he dismisses, just shade away from being polite.

“And Mr. Stark sees people by appointment only,” the voice is still amused, but a little harder now, a little more mocking.

Steve grinds his teeth. The man is enough like Stark to set his teeth on edge. “And who are you?”

“Jason Snuffle-up-a-gus,” he man replies without skipping a beat. “Hair stylist by day, adult film star by night.”

_“Excuse me?”_

“Tony has decided to adopt a career as a tango dancer. He’s currently training for his first gig in Argentina.” The man pronounces the ‘g’ as an ‘h’ with a little too much phlegm.

Steve just gapes at the man – there was no way Jason Snuffle-up-a-gus was his real name. And 'adult film star' just... _no_.

“—and oh wow, look at the hour. It’s very nearly Peanut Butter Jelly Time, and I really must be off. Toodle-oo, Rocky!” Steve’s mind hasn’t processed any of the words even as the man twiddles his fingers at Steve before turning back to the elevator.

The conversation couldn’t have lasted longer than a minute, but still he’s exhausted. And confused. Mostly confused. Just before the metal doors slide shut the man turns back to Steve, face suddenly very serious. The contrast is startling.

“Tell Fury his debrief will be emailed to him within the hour and to _stop._ ”

And then he’s gone, leaving Steve gaping like a fish in the lobby of the Avengers Tower.

This is how Steve Rogers meets Shawn Spencer.

"Um... Director?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shawn knows everyone. Fury is a softy. Tony's chairs are still ridiculously comfortable.

And this is how Nick Fury meets Shawn Spencer (again).

Rogers had called him, sounding a little dazed and a lot confused.

_“Director, I… I, uh, don’t know what just happened exactly. I didn’t see Stark, but another man came down. He was, well, he **said** he was a hair stylist and, uh…-- _ Rogers coughed – _“never mind. He said that Stark was a tango dancer now? In Argentina? But then he said that the debrief would be ‘emailed’” –_ if Fury were a softer man, he would’ve have laughed at Roger’s confusion over the simple word – _“and then he said for you to ‘stop’. So… There’s my report. Sir.”_

But Rogers wasn’t the only one confused, though Fury preferred to think of himself as _intrigued_.

Still. Here he stood (sat), two weeks after the attack on Manhattan, in the lobby of the Avengers Tower, waiting on Stark or the ‘hair stylist’ - whoever the fuck that might be.

He’d been waiting for nearly ten minutes and was about two minutes away from storming the penthouse with his rocket launcher. He would’ve done it five minutes ago, but the lobby chairs were ridiculously comfortable. He could just feel years of back-pain melting away.

The universe was a bitch, though, and so a headache pounded between his temples, a regular occurrence since meeting Howard Stark and then later his son. Fury had taken to referring to them as Stark Headaches.

“Blofeld,” Fury had to force himself not to jump at the voice. Instead he twisted the chair around to face the new comer (secretly a little amused that the square leather chairs were turn-able). “What – no cat today?”

And then Fury freezes. Because standing in front of him is Shawn Motherfucking Spencer. Smirking with his hands shoved in grey sweatpants, looking every bit the pain in the ass Nick Fury knows him to be, is Shawn Mother _fucking_ Spencer. Fuck intriguing, this was just _confusing_.

“Spencer,” Fury finally growls, standing with a deep scowl to– he thinks – hide his confusion.

The smirk blossoms into a full-blown grin at an expression that has made lesser men piss their pants. Oh yes, this is Spencer. And he _knows_.

“Grumpy!” Spencer beams, and Fury forces himself not to wince at the nick-name. “I haven’t seen you since the thing in England. You talk to Tanner lately? Apparently the new guy’s kind of an ass.”

Fury might have to rename all of his headaches after Spencer instead of Stark. Because this civilian – this pain in the _ass_ – is apparently better informed than he is. And _he_ ’s a goddamn spy. Spencer just smiles beatifically as though he can read Fury’s mind. Sometimes Fury thinks he can. Because Spencer _knows_.

And then the pieces click together. Because Spencer _knows_ literally everyone - of course he knows Tony Goddamn Stark. 

“Where the fuck is Stark?” He finally manages.

“Tango dancing. In Argentina.”

Fury narrows his eyes. “And I suppose you’re doing his hair for the competition?”

Spencer’s smile broadens impossibly further, and, if Fury weren’t so annoyed, he knows he would be blinded by the charisma of the expression. As it is, he can feel his annoyance dissipating. Shawn Mother _fucking_ Spencer.

“I can do yours for you, too, honeysuckle.”

Fury scrunches up his face and presses the heel of his hand against his good eye. Definitely renaming his headaches.

“I need to talk to him right the fuck now.”

“I need you to back off right the fuck now.”

The _steel_ in his voice makes Fury look up, blatantly surprised now. Shawn Spencer is never serious. Hearing his voice devoid of any humor is… _worrying_. Hazel eyes meet his, and there is no give. Spencer will not let him speak to Stark, not without a fight. And Fury recalls an AI of Stark's which is far more likely to side with Stark's apparent _friend_ rather than the Director of SHIELD.

“Why?”

If any of his agents had seen Fury concede defeat so quickly to an unarmed civilian, they would’ve had a stroke. But Shawn Spencer knew things about people – how they functioned, their strengths, their fears – and when he told you something, you damn well better listen. Fury had learned this the hard way. England had been… enlightening.

“Tony _died_ , Nick. He was dead. He went into space. He was in what amounts to a warzone -- again. He does not need to be reminded of any of these things for your _goddamn report_.”

And Fury just stands there and listens, still frowning, but no longer scowling. Following the 'Battle of Manhattan', all of the Avengers had been scheduled for a month of mandatory psych evalutions, including Banner, but excluding Thor. His agents had accepted it as standard procedure, and Banner had shrugged and accepted it as part of the price for SHIELD's protection from the military. Rogers had been uncomfortable with the idea, not unexpected considering psychiatry was still coming together in his day and age, but even the former soldier had conceded. All of the Avengers had been sceduled for a month of mandatory psych evaluations. Except Stark.

"Is he alright?”

Frustrating as the man was, Fury had a soft spot for Stark rivaled only by his soft spot for Spencer. Stark didn’t know this. Spencer almost certainly did.

“Not right now. He will be, though,” Spencer says. “Just… stop, alright? No more agents or phone calls or Captain Spangly Pants or personal visits. Let him come to you.” A pause. “Unless you discover a wormhole or something. Because me and Tony have been dying to fight some Romulans. And tell me that wouldn’t be the best kind of therapy?”

Never mind that Fury has no idea what the fuck a Romulan is, it’s good to hear the humor in Spencer's voice again. And of course he knows about the psych evals. Shawn Mother _fucking_ Spencer.

Fury smiles a little bit, another expression that would terrify any of his agents, but serves only to make Spencer quirk his own lips up.

“You and Stark are going to fucking kill me,” Fury finally says, shaking his head.

“Nah, Agent would come after us with his taser.”

Because of course Spencer knows Coulson isn’t dead.

Fury huffs and scrubs at his face again, resigned to Spencer’s seemingly endless knowledge. Who knows if he read if off Fury’s body language or some obscure clue or if he just got the information from his seemingly endless web of informants (friends)? At some point Fury was just going to start sending the man a newsletter and stop trying to hide things from him altogether. Because if he and Stark were as close as they appeared, there was no doubt in Fury's mind that he would be seeing a lot more of Spencer. 

“He called me last week, asked about the last Supernanny. He missed it while he was out.”

Informants (friends) it was, then.

“Stark know?”

“Are pineapples the king of fruits?”

Spencer-speak for yes.

“How’d he take it?”

“Is that virus cleared from your systems yet?”

Fury’s eye twitched.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’.”

Maybe he should rename his headaches Stark-Spencer, spread the blame equally.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this is out of order. I guess we're not going chronologically here.  
> Let me know what you think!
> 
> Gi Melin is Elvish for "I love you" because I have it in my head that Shawn and Tony are sci-fi nerds. And because LOTR is the best.


End file.
